Beginning with gold strikes in the 1860s and continuing through the homestead years into the 1920s, Montanans built more than 2,600 rural schoolhouses. Settlers squatting on Crow lands in the Fishtail Basin near present-day Dean began educating their children here in a one-room log cabin in 1894. The school served area children for twenty years, until fire gutted the building on a cold March day in 1914. Before fire engulfed the building, teacher Miss Schwenneker and the older children quickly removed all the furnishings, including part of the chalkboard. School resumed in a nearby granary. In 1915, Mary Doane and her great nephew Clarence Rich donated land for a new school and playground, and community members built a modern education building for Dean residents. The new school was nothing like the former dimly lit, rough-hewn log school. Polished maple floors, high ceilings clad with decorative (and fireproof) tin panels, a spacious cloakroom, tall windows flooding the room with natural light, and a small but comfortable, attached teacherage (apartment) transformed school, social, and civic life for the community. Children in grades one through eight learned together during the day, and on weekends and evenings community members gathered for parties, elections, lectures, and club and association meetings. Beloved teacher Delores Haas directed the school from 1954 until it closed in 1967. Since then the Dean Community Club has used the building for social events. A full rehabilitation in 2018 returned the Dean School to its original appearance.
]]>In 1917, Charles and Gladys Pelton arrived in Stillwater County from Nebraska to become ranchers. Together, they created one of the most successful sheep ranches in Stillwater County. Charles “Charley” served as president of both the Stillwater Wool Growers Association and the Beartooth Stockgrowers Association. The Pelton family first lived in a small white house immediately south of here. In September 1927, they hired local contractor and mason Vern Garoutte, from Absarokee, to build this distinctive American Foursquare house. By February 1928, the Absarokee paper reported that the couple and their four children were “happily ensconced” in their new home, “a fine cobblestone two-story structure with basement, and … all modern conveniences, such as electric lights and waterworks and a fine fireplace. It is an ideal country home.” The American Foursquare was one of the most popular housing styles in the early twentieth century. The Pelton House includes all the style’s typical features: a square plan, a low pyramidal hipped roof with wide overhangs, two roof dormers on opposing roof slopes, and a full-width front porch. Yet it is the home’s construction that makes it unique; it is built with great skill of local cobblestones, many of which came from excavating the basement. The walls are twenty inches thick, and a massive cobblestone chimney dominates the north elevation. Gladys and Charley Pelton lived here until 1959. The Pelton House is an impressive example of cobblestone construction, skilled workmanship, durability, and beauty.
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